Nvidia's RTX Spark N1X Laptops Tested: Strong Arm App Support, Playable Gaming, High Prices
Nvidia's RTX Spark N1X, an Arm-based chip for laptops and small desktops, is being tested in five high-end machines priced from $2,599.99 to $6,999.99. The Verge reports broad Windows on Arm app compatibility and playable gaming at medium settings, but the laptops remain expensive and aimed at developers and creators.
The laptops tested by The Verge carry the top N1X configuration with 20 CPU cores and 6,144 GPU CUDA cores. Prices range from $3,199.99 for a 32GB HP OmniBook Ultra to $6,999.99 for a 128GB Asus ProArt P16. The flagship placement is Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra with 128GB of unified memory, which Tom Warren fully reviewed. Sean Hollister tested a 64GB Asus ProArt P16. Antonio Di Benedetto tested the top-spec 128GB Asus ProArt P16, a 64GB Lenovo Yoga 9n 2-in-1 and the 32GB HP OmniBook Ultra. A lower-cost N1X with 18 CPU cores and 5,120 CUDA cores starts at $2,599.99 in a Surface Laptop Ultra or a smaller Asus ProArt P14 with 24GB of RAM.
According to The Verge, these are big and expensive laptops built on new chips. They are meant for developers, coders and content creators who may also want local AI and gaming with recent Nvidia technology such as DLSS 5. The publication said it did not have enough time for an exhaustive scored review of any single laptop, so it instead presented impressions from three writers using five laptops for a week.
On everyday Windows on Arm use, Antonio Di Benedetto said the platform is no longer a wholly subpar experience. Native Arm apps for Windows have grown, largely because of the push around Qualcomm's Snapdragon X chips, and many x86 apps work through Microsoft's Prism emulation layer. Adobe has native Arm versions of Photoshop and Premiere, and Lightroom Classic, still an x86-based app, ran without noticeable issues for him. He said Windows on Arm would be a non-starter mainly for users who rely on specialized x86-only software or want to play any game without compatibility concerns.
Sean Hollister said apps sometimes took longer to load than they should, though they typically loaded and occasionally needed more than one try. He said his Evernote notes disappeared a few times one day when he alt-tabbed away, but a force refresh fixed it, and apps did not seem to respect his system preference for dark mode. He used an RTX Spark laptop as his daily driver with Signal, Discord, Audacity, CapCut, Evernote, Irfanview, Slack, ScreenToGif and more, and nothing failed him. He said he never needed to think about whether he was running an Arm or x86 app. The real hitches came with gaming and AI.
Tom Warren, who has used a Windows on Arm laptop with a Qualcomm chip daily for two years, said things have improved to the point that he cannot tell if an app is native. He reported the same story on the RTX Spark laptops and said Nvidia's entry into the category should improve the situation for creative apps and gaming.
On gaming, Tom Warren said Windows on Arm never looked like a serious gaming platform before now. Native Arm games remain few, but Nvidia's GPU helps push through the emulation layer. Results vary by title, but medium settings at 1440p with DLSS performance mode generally reached a stable 60fps in most games, he said. He ran Black Myth: Wukong at an average of 70fps at native resolution of 3270 x 2180 with medium settings and DLSS performance. Cyberpunk 2077 averaged 66fps under the same settings, and Forza Horizon 6 averaged 57fps. Some titles may require dropping the resolution or settings lower. He said the experience is not as good as a dedicated gaming laptop, but for something roughly on the level of a MacBook Pro it is more than good enough for gaming on the go.